With the Expedia Hotels for Android (Free), travelers can find a room from over one-hundred thousand hotels in a four taps. Much like the Expedia website (Free, 3.5 stars) it streamlines, Expedia's hotel app is friendly and modern, with subtle innovations that make it a joy to use. The app pins nearby hotels to a map using your phone's GPS and lets you pare back results by price, distance, and traveler rating (based upon results from TripAdvisor). And for every hotel, you can swipe through full-res images and browse amenities and descriptions. It's not one-hundred percent convenientI'd love to synchronize the app with my Expedia account to skip manually entering my billing infoand I'm eagerly awaiting the day Expedia emulates Priceline.com (Free, 3 stars) and Travelocity (Free, 3.5 stars) with its own take on Name Your Price and Top Secret Hotels, but as a mobile recreation of a browser-based experience, Expedia Hotels (for Android) an excellent ideal companion for the last-minute traveler.

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Results without Delay
As soon as you open the app, there's no delay: It automatically locates nearby hotels based upon your phone's GPS. From the header you can manually enter a location, if where you are isn't where you want to stay. To the right of the location search field there's a calendar icon from which you can extend your stay (by default Expedia anticipates a one-night stay) by dragging your finger across a calendar. Adding more guests (Expedia expects one, by default) is as easy as tapping the silhouette icon and adding additional adults or children.

At the bottom of the header there's a pull-down menu from which you can customize results. You can sort by popularity or price, add dependencies for distance (2 miles, 5 miles, 10 miles) or price (one, two, or three dollar signs), or only show "highly rated hotels," courtesy of TripAdvisor. By default, you'll get a list of hotels based upon those criteria. In addition to names, pricing, and star ratings, Expedia calls out deals with red "Sale" tags and flags in green highly rated hotels from TripAdvisor.

Best Practices in Practice
When I was looking for hypothetical hotels in Manhattan, there were, unsurprisingly, a ton of results within even the narrowest range (2 miles). In my experience, two features stood out. First, in list view, Expedia Hotels has a slider on the right-hand side of the screen with green annotations (thin lines) for each sale-priced hotel. This is a great way for bargain hunters to quickly jump around results. Second, tapping a small globe icon in the bottom left-hand corner of the screen lets you pin hotels to a map. In densely populated cities such as New York, seeing where a hotel is on a map in relation to your location is considerably more useful than a basic address or distance estimate. Best of all, Expedia Hotels calls out TripAdvisor with green markers (why not red, for consistency, I don't know, but helpful, nevertheless).

Browsing and Booking
Tap a hotel of interest and Expedia Hotels adapts content for the limited real estate of a smartphone. Tilting the phone one way or another rearranges images, icons, and text. The pricing, star rating, TripAdvisor ranking, and amenities appear in simple, colorful icons and text. Want to see images of a hotel? Simply swipe left or right to cycle through available photos. You can even jump back to the Google Map view by touching the globe icon.

If you decide you want to book, there's a bright yellow "Book Now" button at the top of the screen. In my experience, hotels typically four or five accommodation options. For example, at the Mandarin Oriental in Columbus Circle (a boy can dream), there were four available rooms: Deluxe, Hudson River View, Mandarin Executive Suite, and Central Park View Suite. Ever frugal, I chose the Central Park View Suite ($1,995), for which a four-night stay with taxes and fees totaled $9,179.04. If I were in a place (e.g., another universe) in which I could afford the Mandarin, however, I would have to manually enter my guest information and billing informationthough the app, to its credit, does save this information for future bookings. I would love to have the option to sign into Expedia and auto-fill these fields using my account information retained from the company's website.

Easy Booking Anywhere
Expedia Hotels (for Android) won't get you the lowest possible price for your mobile booking, but it will make it extraordinarily convenient. As with Expedia.com, the app lacks the roulette-style deals of Priceline.com or Travelocity, and it would certainly benefit from tighter account integration; however, when it comes to simply sorting, filtering, and visualizing results, Expedia Hotels is one smart smartphone app. Use it a couple of times, and it gets even clevereras it retains your user infomaking it an excellent companion to the mobile, last-minute travel booker.

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About the Author

As a contributing editor, William Fenton specializes in research and education software. In addition to his role at PCMag.com, William is also a Teaching Fellow and Director of the Writing Center at Fordham University Lincoln Center. To learn more about his research interests, visit his homepage or follow him on Academia.edu, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Expedia Hotels (for Android)

Expedia Hotels (for Android)

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